| dc.description.abstract | Any leader of a country, as its
foreign policy executive (FPE), may perceive
systemic stimuli with surgical precision,
hence positioning his country in a foreign
policy trajectory, which in turn facilitates the
realization of its goals and aspirations.
However, a nation state, since its inception in
1648, will encounter dire political
repercussions if the said systemic signals are
perceived with abject failure by the FPE thus
plunging the country into a vortex of self –
destruction. In this backdrop, this article
attempts to examine whether Mahinda
Rajapaksa (MR), between 2005 and 2015 as
well as Maithripala Sirisena (MS)
inconjunction with Ranil Wickremesinghe
(RW), between 2015 and 2019, as FPEs, were
successful in grasping systemic stimuli, hence
exercising a pragmatic foreign policy. The
authors shall further discuss the above with a
particular emphasis on Sri Lanka’s relations
with the United States (US), China and India
between 2005 and 2019 amidst their great
power play in the theatre of the Indian Ocean.
Furthermore, this research shall attempt to
examine whether leader perceptions are the
sole determining factors of a foreign policy
which alternated between pro – China and pro
– West. This is a qualitative case study which
involves the deductive method. The authors
will analyze both primary and secondary data
in the adoption of a qualitative approach. The
research will derive its propositions from Neo
– Classical Realism in the discipline of
international relations, particularly in
analyzing the correlation between foreign
policy and the domestic intervening variable
of leader images in foreign policy making of
Sri Lanka. | en_US |
